Coffee consumption may ward off liver cancer, says Japanese study
More good news about coffee!
"A Japanese study has found that people who drink coffee are less likely to develop liver cancer than those who abstain. Studying 61,000 people between 1984 and 1997, the study found a significant difference in liver cancer rates among those who drank more than one cup of coffee per day. The researchers hypothesize that chlorogenic acid, found in the coffee bean, may be the cancer-fighting agent responsible."
Friday, February 17, 2006
New Scientist Breaking News - Coffee's effects revealed in brain scans
New Scientist Breaking News - Coffee's effects revealed in brain scans
"Coffee improves short-term memory and speeds up reaction times by acting on the brain’s prefrontal cortex, according to a new study."
See, coffee is good for you!
"Coffee improves short-term memory and speeds up reaction times by acting on the brain’s prefrontal cortex, according to a new study."
See, coffee is good for you!
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Matt Makes Espresso part 1
I've been searching for a way to take things to the next level. I decided it was time to learn more, so for the past few months I've been reading, researching, trying to find new ways to enjoy coffee. I've learned a lot and I'll share it with you in time. One of the results of this research was that it instilled within me a desire to make espresso.
Quite frankly, I'd never been impressed with espresso. It just seemed like a yuppie drink. Overpriced for a small amount of strong coffee that still had a fraction of the caffeine of a real cup of coffee. But then I read all sorts of people waxing poetic about espresso, and the transcendend experience it can be when done right. But there are a lot of conditions to doing it right, and somehow I don't think the stoned teenagers that staff the coffee shops where I'd gotten my espressos before really put the time and talent into doing it right.
So I decided I'd have to do it myself. It might take years of practice, but ultimately I'd be able to "pull a God shot," as the espresso fanatics refer to it as.
I did some more research and ultimately settled on the Rancillio Miss Silvia espresso maker and Rocky grinder combination. They have such a cult following. There are even websites devoted to modding the Miss Silvia, and people write eloquently about how much they love the pair but...
I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Miss Silvia, I'm sorry to say, is butt ugly. There's no design going into the exterior. Just a big ugly cube of stainless steel, trying to be osequious and hidden in spite of the general ostentatiousness of espresso. And the cult following and people anthropomorphizing their devices was a turn-off, even if the idea of a community I could go to for more information was nice.
Then I found it. The Francis! Francis! X5. It was at TJMaxx for almost $400 less than the retail price.
It is heavy. It is really ugly in an almost beautiful awkwardness like a Stealth bomber painted pink. Pink! This color does not exist anywhere in my house for a reason. But for $400, I'd deal with it. And you know? It isn't bad. Somehow the fact that it doesn't try to blend in makes it easier to ignore. And pink is the new black anyway, so I can just pretend.
Still, there's something I like about the Francis! Francis! in-your-face attitude. Not many companies manage to work two exclamation points into their name. Not many company owners would have a picture of their daughter sticking her tongue out as their company logo.
I've only tried making "real" espresso twice. I've been using up the free package of Illy pods that came with it. The pods are disgustingly convenient. They're little hocky pucks of coffee, ground, compressed and wrapped in a paper filter. You pop it in, make the espresso, pop it out and throw it away. The espresso made this way doesn't taste nearly as good as the shots I ineptly made using my own freshly ground coffee, but they're soooooo easy. Soon, I'll have a proper tamper though (the tamper was missing from the box, unfortunately, so I had to order a new one) and I'll start working on that "God shot." I'll let you know how it works out.
Quite frankly, I'd never been impressed with espresso. It just seemed like a yuppie drink. Overpriced for a small amount of strong coffee that still had a fraction of the caffeine of a real cup of coffee. But then I read all sorts of people waxing poetic about espresso, and the transcendend experience it can be when done right. But there are a lot of conditions to doing it right, and somehow I don't think the stoned teenagers that staff the coffee shops where I'd gotten my espressos before really put the time and talent into doing it right.
So I decided I'd have to do it myself. It might take years of practice, but ultimately I'd be able to "pull a God shot," as the espresso fanatics refer to it as.
I did some more research and ultimately settled on the Rancillio Miss Silvia espresso maker and Rocky grinder combination. They have such a cult following. There are even websites devoted to modding the Miss Silvia, and people write eloquently about how much they love the pair but...
I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Miss Silvia, I'm sorry to say, is butt ugly. There's no design going into the exterior. Just a big ugly cube of stainless steel, trying to be osequious and hidden in spite of the general ostentatiousness of espresso. And the cult following and people anthropomorphizing their devices was a turn-off, even if the idea of a community I could go to for more information was nice.
Then I found it. The Francis! Francis! X5. It was at TJMaxx for almost $400 less than the retail price.
It is heavy. It is really ugly in an almost beautiful awkwardness like a Stealth bomber painted pink. Pink! This color does not exist anywhere in my house for a reason. But for $400, I'd deal with it. And you know? It isn't bad. Somehow the fact that it doesn't try to blend in makes it easier to ignore. And pink is the new black anyway, so I can just pretend. 
Still, there's something I like about the Francis! Francis! in-your-face attitude. Not many companies manage to work two exclamation points into their name. Not many company owners would have a picture of their daughter sticking her tongue out as their company logo.
I've only tried making "real" espresso twice. I've been using up the free package of Illy pods that came with it. The pods are disgustingly convenient. They're little hocky pucks of coffee, ground, compressed and wrapped in a paper filter. You pop it in, make the espresso, pop it out and throw it away. The espresso made this way doesn't taste nearly as good as the shots I ineptly made using my own freshly ground coffee, but they're soooooo easy. Soon, I'll have a proper tamper though (the tamper was missing from the box, unfortunately, so I had to order a new one) and I'll start working on that "God shot." I'll let you know how it works out.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
how much is it worth?
My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?
... but I'll take $2000 for it...
Honestly, I have no idea how they come up with that number. It seems very generous to me.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Hot Lunch!
Sorry everyone. Right now I'm taking the equivalent of 4 grad level classes, while teaching 3 college classes. My bloggery will be sporadic until next year at the soonest, if I don't kill myself with overcommitment & stress. Drinkng shot glass of Aloe Vera gel twice a day keeps the stomach ulcers within acceptable parameters. Guess I should see a doctor about those... but he'll just tell me to cut down on the coffee. Yeah, that'll happen. My plan is to get an espresso machine as soon as I'm not poor. Espresso, while tasting stronger, extracts less caffiene. The caffiene is what's hard on the stomach. Then I will regale you with tales of learning to make coffee!
In the meantime, get your food writing fix at the wonderful Hot Lunch, where my friend Dustin and his friends write about what they're eating.
In the meantime, get your food writing fix at the wonderful Hot Lunch, where my friend Dustin and his friends write about what they're eating.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Naked Coffee
In the introduction to his book Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs says, "The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch - a frozen moment where everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."
Sometimes the "fork" is a cup of coffee. I was down in Guatemala a decade or so ago. There I learned that average Guatemalans don't ever get to drink their own coffee. It is too expensive. Less than 1% of the population makes more than $500 a year. American importers have paid as high as $2 and as low as $0.30 a pound for the coffee. Even 30 cents is a huge amount for most Guatemalans. That really floored me. I just couldn't believe that they didn't even get to enjoy their most famous product. Then I saw something else. A man heading out to work to spray pesticides on the coffee plants. He had a big vat of poison strapped to his back with a spray hose attached. He was just wearing plain clothes. Just a cloth t-shirt and pants. No protective gear of any sort. No respirator. There's no OSHA in Guatemala. I'm sure he'd never been told that the chemicals he was carrying were harmful to him as well, or been given any instructions on how to avoid getting those chemicals in his community's drinking water...
Naked coffee... that frozen moment where you see exactly what is in your cup. Maxwell House, Folgers, Starbucks... these companies pay the barest minimum they can for their coffee, and they knowingly encourage practices like unsafe pesticide use. Lest you think this is somehow justified, consider that a few years back, growers were getting around $2 a pound for their beans, but due to changes in the market they now make around 30 cents a pound. Are you paying 85% less for your coffee than you were a few years ago? No, because the consumer is getting exploited along with the grower. While corporate coffee gets a huge increase in profits, the consumer gets screwed, and the growers get less than they need to survive. If you buy coffee from these companies you're paying for this to continue.
My new hero is Dean Cycon. Dean makes it really easy to make a moral stand in a cup of coffee. Dean ONLY sells fairly traded, organic, shade grown coffee.
A quick explanation of what that means. Fair Trade sets a minimum price cap on what the grower gets paid (currently $1.41 for organic, as opposed to the 30 cents Starbucks etc. pay). That's just the start of what Fair Trade does, but essentially it means if your coffee has the fair trade designation, you can be reasonably sure that the growers aren't being exploited. Organic means (and here there are many standards and definitions, but generally speaking...) that the coffee was grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers. It is good to see because you know the grower wasn't poisoning themselves or their community to grow the coffee, and you know you aren't drinking trace amounts of pesticides. Shade grown does organic one better. It means the coffee is grown while disrupting the local flora and fauna as little as possible. It means growing with the environment. Just because something is organic doesn't mean there wasn't a forest clearcut to create a field to plant the coffee in.
As I said before, though, Dean makes it easy to be moral. You should be buying nothing but organic, shade grown, Fair Trade coffees because it is the right thing to do. But sadly, too many people don't really care what's on the end of their fork. As long as something is cheap and convenient it really doesn't matter who suffered to get something into your mouth. And to be honest with you, even though I've seen that suffering first hand, I need that cup of coffee. If Starbucks is the only thing around, I'll get my coffee there because caffiene withdrawals will render me nonfunctional if I don't. And if money is tight, I'll go with the non-organic products to save a buck.
But Dean's Beans don't cost any more than other specialty coffees, at least at the Belfast Coop where I shop. And if one cares nothing about the rest of the world, and only about one's own pleasure, they still win with Dean's Beans. You can compare for yourself. Take any brand of coffee that has organic and shade grown versions and do a taste-test with the non-organic options. Organic coffee tastes better than non-organic. It is noticably richer, fuller. Shade-grown coffee tastes that much better again than ordinary organic.
Dean's Beans make the best coffee I've ever had. Nothing else will do for me now. I had a few pounds of Alta Dena, which is darn good coffee, but I gave that to my sister. I even carry some ground up beans with me when I leave town so I can make my own when I'm away from Belfast (in the base of my Planetary Designs French Press mug, of course!). If you're a friend, relative or student of mine, let me know and I'll be happy to pick some up for you. Otherwise, you can find a Deans Beans reseller near you, or order beans here.
Hurricane Katrina did a number on New Orleans. Although we didn't here about it much in the news in the US, Hurricane Stan has done much, much more damage to Guatemala, El Salvador and other Latin American countries than Katrina did to NOLA. Sadly, I think many of us have overdosed on compassion, and don't have much left over. But just by buying Fair Trade coffees exclusively you are doing something. You are helping. At least it's a start!
Sometimes the "fork" is a cup of coffee. I was down in Guatemala a decade or so ago. There I learned that average Guatemalans don't ever get to drink their own coffee. It is too expensive. Less than 1% of the population makes more than $500 a year. American importers have paid as high as $2 and as low as $0.30 a pound for the coffee. Even 30 cents is a huge amount for most Guatemalans. That really floored me. I just couldn't believe that they didn't even get to enjoy their most famous product. Then I saw something else. A man heading out to work to spray pesticides on the coffee plants. He had a big vat of poison strapped to his back with a spray hose attached. He was just wearing plain clothes. Just a cloth t-shirt and pants. No protective gear of any sort. No respirator. There's no OSHA in Guatemala. I'm sure he'd never been told that the chemicals he was carrying were harmful to him as well, or been given any instructions on how to avoid getting those chemicals in his community's drinking water...
Naked coffee... that frozen moment where you see exactly what is in your cup. Maxwell House, Folgers, Starbucks... these companies pay the barest minimum they can for their coffee, and they knowingly encourage practices like unsafe pesticide use. Lest you think this is somehow justified, consider that a few years back, growers were getting around $2 a pound for their beans, but due to changes in the market they now make around 30 cents a pound. Are you paying 85% less for your coffee than you were a few years ago? No, because the consumer is getting exploited along with the grower. While corporate coffee gets a huge increase in profits, the consumer gets screwed, and the growers get less than they need to survive. If you buy coffee from these companies you're paying for this to continue.
My new hero is Dean Cycon. Dean makes it really easy to make a moral stand in a cup of coffee. Dean ONLY sells fairly traded, organic, shade grown coffee.A quick explanation of what that means. Fair Trade sets a minimum price cap on what the grower gets paid (currently $1.41 for organic, as opposed to the 30 cents Starbucks etc. pay). That's just the start of what Fair Trade does, but essentially it means if your coffee has the fair trade designation, you can be reasonably sure that the growers aren't being exploited. Organic means (and here there are many standards and definitions, but generally speaking...) that the coffee was grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers. It is good to see because you know the grower wasn't poisoning themselves or their community to grow the coffee, and you know you aren't drinking trace amounts of pesticides. Shade grown does organic one better. It means the coffee is grown while disrupting the local flora and fauna as little as possible. It means growing with the environment. Just because something is organic doesn't mean there wasn't a forest clearcut to create a field to plant the coffee in.
As I said before, though, Dean makes it easy to be moral. You should be buying nothing but organic, shade grown, Fair Trade coffees because it is the right thing to do. But sadly, too many people don't really care what's on the end of their fork. As long as something is cheap and convenient it really doesn't matter who suffered to get something into your mouth. And to be honest with you, even though I've seen that suffering first hand, I need that cup of coffee. If Starbucks is the only thing around, I'll get my coffee there because caffiene withdrawals will render me nonfunctional if I don't. And if money is tight, I'll go with the non-organic products to save a buck.
But Dean's Beans don't cost any more than other specialty coffees, at least at the Belfast Coop where I shop. And if one cares nothing about the rest of the world, and only about one's own pleasure, they still win with Dean's Beans. You can compare for yourself. Take any brand of coffee that has organic and shade grown versions and do a taste-test with the non-organic options. Organic coffee tastes better than non-organic. It is noticably richer, fuller. Shade-grown coffee tastes that much better again than ordinary organic.
Dean's Beans make the best coffee I've ever had. Nothing else will do for me now. I had a few pounds of Alta Dena, which is darn good coffee, but I gave that to my sister. I even carry some ground up beans with me when I leave town so I can make my own when I'm away from Belfast (in the base of my Planetary Designs French Press mug, of course!). If you're a friend, relative or student of mine, let me know and I'll be happy to pick some up for you. Otherwise, you can find a Deans Beans reseller near you, or order beans here.
Hurricane Katrina did a number on New Orleans. Although we didn't here about it much in the news in the US, Hurricane Stan has done much, much more damage to Guatemala, El Salvador and other Latin American countries than Katrina did to NOLA. Sadly, I think many of us have overdosed on compassion, and don't have much left over. But just by buying Fair Trade coffees exclusively you are doing something. You are helping. At least it's a start!
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
My new favorite thing: Planetary Design's Double Shot French Press
I love gadgets and spend an inordinate amount of time and money on them. Very few of these things, however, have altered my life on a day-to-day basis. Planetary Design's Double Shot French Press Mug, however, is one that has.
I'd passed by the Double Shot, sold at the Belfast Co-op where I do my shopping, many times before and never really gave it much attention before. It seemed just a little gimicky to me. But a few weekends ago friends Dustin and Hillary were visiting and Hillary just couldn't stop talking about how cool it was, so I gave it another look. Thanks, Hillary, for making me notice!
The idea is pretty simple. Take an insulated coffee mug and build in a French press, thus making it portable. Not a bad idea, really, since French presses tend to be made of glass, and are easily breakable. Planetary Design's Double Shot French Press Mug is more than this. It is a design masterpiece. Bodum gets the credit for making the best French presses in the world, but after having the Double Shot in my life for a couple weeks, I have to wonder if Bodum's more honest claim is just that they have the best marketing. My Bodum press has been sitting on the counter since I got the Double Shot, even when I'm not taking my coffee on the road.
For starters, look at the heart of any French press, the plunger mechanism. It is a patented design, far superior to any I've seen. It has a plastic flange with a built-in spring to ensure that it is constantly pressed against the side of the mug. Some French presses just use a solid plastic disc. The Bodum uses the slightly better method of coiled spring to press the screen against the side of the carafe. The problem with these methods is that if the plunger tilts you wind up with coffee grounds in your drinking coffee. Planetary Designs provides the best seal I've ever seen, far more effective than Bodum's, and it is also very forgiving. No grounds even if the screen tilts. And yet it is a simpler mechanism. The screen just has one part as opposed to Bodum's three, making it much easier to clean.
The lid is also well thought-out. It actually has a rubber O-ring that completely seals the lid to the mug. There's an additional screen where the coffee comes out. I'm not sure if it is the addition of this second screen, or if both screens use a finer mesh than Bodum and other French presses do, but the end result is that you can actually drink your coffee down to the last drop. Fans of French presses know that you have to avoid that last swallow of coffee in the cup. That's the one drawback to brewing coffee using a screen instead of a filter. You wind up with a certain amount of sediment at the bottom. It is a small price to pay, but even still it catches me off guard when I'm hurriedly quaffing my last bit of coffee before running out the door and wind up with a mouth full of grounds and powder. This isn't an issue with the Double Shot.
The Double-Shot is made with marine-grade stainless steel (whatever that means) and is insulated. Insulated mugs are something I tend to avoid for around-the-house use. They're fine for traveling, but (and of course this could just be my overactive imagination because stainless steel is supposed to be nonreactive, so there's no way this could be true... could there?) I find that even in stainless steel travel mugs the coffee tastes different to me. Not as good as it would taste in a ceramic mug. Maybe it is the "marine grade" stainless steel that makes a difference, but coffee in the Double-Shot tastes just as good as it does if I made it in my glass French press. Even better, since it doesn't have the sediment and the insulated cup keeps the coffee consistently hot, seemingly for hours, giving me time to savor the taste before the coffee goes cold.
I was initially resistant to the directions that came with the cup which said to add the cream to the coffee grounds BEFORE pouring in the hot water. Usually the cream is the thing that cools the coffee off enough to drink so you don't have to wait, so I worried that adding it before brewing would make the water too cool to brew a decent cup. The insulated mug, however, more than compensates for the cooling effect of the cream.
All this is cool enough to justify the price ($28 online from Liquid Planet, $22 at the Belfast Coop if I remember correctly. If you're a friend of mine let me know and I'll pick one up for you...) but the Double Shot still holds one feature that'll make you say, "Oh, that is SO COOL!" Pull off the bottom (sealed with another rubber O-ring) and inside that is an air-tight cannister that will hold enough ground coffee for two more cups (or secret documents or whatever other contraband you need to smuggle). You know, I've always hated those people who, at the coffee shop or restaurant say, "Can I just get a little hot water for this?" and pull out their own tea bag they brought from home. It's always seemed like a totally cheapskate thing to do. But with this massively cool hidden canister thing I may just be losing cool points this year.
So, there you have it. My latest "all-time favorite thing EVER!" I'm sure I'll have another one shortly. I usually do, but I'll be enjoying it with my Double Shot in hand.
I'd passed by the Double Shot, sold at the Belfast Co-op where I do my shopping, many times before and never really gave it much attention before. It seemed just a little gimicky to me. But a few weekends ago friends Dustin and Hillary were visiting and Hillary just couldn't stop talking about how cool it was, so I gave it another look. Thanks, Hillary, for making me notice!
The idea is pretty simple. Take an insulated coffee mug and build in a French press, thus making it portable. Not a bad idea, really, since French presses tend to be made of glass, and are easily breakable. Planetary Design's Double Shot French Press Mug is more than this. It is a design masterpiece. Bodum gets the credit for making the best French presses in the world, but after having the Double Shot in my life for a couple weeks, I have to wonder if Bodum's more honest claim is just that they have the best marketing. My Bodum press has been sitting on the counter since I got the Double Shot, even when I'm not taking my coffee on the road.
For starters, look at the heart of any French press, the plunger mechanism. It is a patented design, far superior to any I've seen. It has a plastic flange with a built-in spring to ensure that it is constantly pressed against the side of the mug. Some French presses just use a solid plastic disc. The Bodum uses the slightly better method of coiled spring to press the screen against the side of the carafe. The problem with these methods is that if the plunger tilts you wind up with coffee grounds in your drinking coffee. Planetary Designs provides the best seal I've ever seen, far more effective than Bodum's, and it is also very forgiving. No grounds even if the screen tilts. And yet it is a simpler mechanism. The screen just has one part as opposed to Bodum's three, making it much easier to clean.
The lid is also well thought-out. It actually has a rubber O-ring that completely seals the lid to the mug. There's an additional screen where the coffee comes out. I'm not sure if it is the addition of this second screen, or if both screens use a finer mesh than Bodum and other French presses do, but the end result is that you can actually drink your coffee down to the last drop. Fans of French presses know that you have to avoid that last swallow of coffee in the cup. That's the one drawback to brewing coffee using a screen instead of a filter. You wind up with a certain amount of sediment at the bottom. It is a small price to pay, but even still it catches me off guard when I'm hurriedly quaffing my last bit of coffee before running out the door and wind up with a mouth full of grounds and powder. This isn't an issue with the Double Shot.The Double-Shot is made with marine-grade stainless steel (whatever that means) and is insulated. Insulated mugs are something I tend to avoid for around-the-house use. They're fine for traveling, but (and of course this could just be my overactive imagination because stainless steel is supposed to be nonreactive, so there's no way this could be true... could there?) I find that even in stainless steel travel mugs the coffee tastes different to me. Not as good as it would taste in a ceramic mug. Maybe it is the "marine grade" stainless steel that makes a difference, but coffee in the Double-Shot tastes just as good as it does if I made it in my glass French press. Even better, since it doesn't have the sediment and the insulated cup keeps the coffee consistently hot, seemingly for hours, giving me time to savor the taste before the coffee goes cold.
I was initially resistant to the directions that came with the cup which said to add the cream to the coffee grounds BEFORE pouring in the hot water. Usually the cream is the thing that cools the coffee off enough to drink so you don't have to wait, so I worried that adding it before brewing would make the water too cool to brew a decent cup. The insulated mug, however, more than compensates for the cooling effect of the cream.
All this is cool enough to justify the price ($28 online from Liquid Planet, $22 at the Belfast Coop if I remember correctly. If you're a friend of mine let me know and I'll pick one up for you...) but the Double Shot still holds one feature that'll make you say, "Oh, that is SO COOL!" Pull off the bottom (sealed with another rubber O-ring) and inside that is an air-tight cannister that will hold enough ground coffee for two more cups (or secret documents or whatever other contraband you need to smuggle). You know, I've always hated those people who, at the coffee shop or restaurant say, "Can I just get a little hot water for this?" and pull out their own tea bag they brought from home. It's always seemed like a totally cheapskate thing to do. But with this massively cool hidden canister thing I may just be losing cool points this year.So, there you have it. My latest "all-time favorite thing EVER!" I'm sure I'll have another one shortly. I usually do, but I'll be enjoying it with my Double Shot in hand.
yeah, yeah
Obviously, it "didn't take" this time around. I blame the weather. It has just been too beautiful. Turns me into an airhead. I need the cold, gray days of fall/winter/spring to get anything done. You should visit the Castles journal though. I've actually been writing there, and it is way more interesting than 100 Cups of Coffee anyway.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Thursday, June 30, 2005
cup 5: only half a cup?
Where: Curti Residence, Kittery, ME
When: June 29, 8 am
Who: Chip and Ernie
What: Equal Exchange
No chance for a picture this morning. Sorry. I should have known. Mom said she'd pick me up at 8:30 am to go to Brenda's, but of course she showed up 45 minutes early, and I only had time to chug half a cup of coffee before she wanted to leave.
Brenda's was remarkable, as expected. Brenda is the self-proclaimed "Bag Lady of Lee." She is the queen of, well, stuff. She goes to yardsales and picks through trash at the dump to find things of questionable value and then finds ways to give them value. Today she had a case of what appeared to be 8.5" x 11" paper cut into thirds, the long way. She was trying to find a way to make these 7500 2.8" x 11" sheets useful. She'd tried glueing then ends of stacks of them together with a hot glue gun with acceptable results only to realize that just one pad was enough to take down all the phone numbers and create all the shopping lists you'd want to for years to come. So she was looking for other uses. Mom needed a stand for her new apartment so we went through the basement and the shed looking for furniture. So much stuff! Floor to ceiling of years are yardsale finds. There's one room devoted entirely to McDonald's Happy Meal Toys (just McDonald's, other fast food toys are in a different area). Another room is just for Legos. An area of the shed has so many baskets hanging from the rafters that you can't see the ceiling, and there's another area devoted entirely to prints of every sort. The stuff goes on and on.
Brenda has rules when going to yardsales: You can never pay asking price for anything at a yardsale. You can never leave a yardsale empty-handed. The latter rule has led to some interesting collections. Brenda let me in on the secret to never leaving empty handed. You choose something to collect every yardsale season, and make sure it is something that most people would consider so worthless that they wouldn't even put it in the yardsale. One year she choose plastic flowers. At the end of the summer she made a giant mountain of flowers to engulf her mailbox. She left it like that for a while, then sold all the flowers at her own yardsale the following summer. She's more selective about her fake flowers now. She gets very realistic ones, and matches the flowers to whatever is in season outside, leaving them up only while the real flowers are in bloom outside and changing them to match the changing season. She delights in fooling people into thinking the fake flowers are real. It is important to note that she often has the real things growing right outside the door and could go out and cut the same flowers to have inside, but that wouldn't be as fun. Now Brenda is acquiring fake fruit. She doesn't know exactly what she's going to do with it all yet. That is half the point of getting it, though. When she has enough, inspiration will strike her and the fruit will take its place in the grand scheme of things.
Sadly, this trip, coming so soon after my big move, I wasn't so much in the mood to acquire more stuff. I think in a couple months I'll take a trip down again. I did manage to find a candy dot maker in amongst all the stuff. Seemed like a perfect way to use some of those 7500 strips of paper.
On returning to the Curti house, I found the remaining half cup of coffee sitting on the counter where I'd left it. I took a swig. Yeah, it had been sitting on the counter in 90 degree heat all day, but the acid in coffee will keep cream from spoiling (I think) so as long as it doesn't tast bad or have chunks, you're OK. Unfortunately, there was a chunk, and I had a brief moment of "swallow or spit?" thinking it might be just a breadcrumb. I spat it out into the sink and it tried to crawl away. A black and had found its way into my coffee. I was pretty grossed out by now. My addiction must be somewhat subsided now, because I dumped the rest of the coffee out and didn't make any more.
So THAT is why I only had half a cup of coffee today.
When: June 29, 8 am
Who: Chip and Ernie
What: Equal Exchange
No chance for a picture this morning. Sorry. I should have known. Mom said she'd pick me up at 8:30 am to go to Brenda's, but of course she showed up 45 minutes early, and I only had time to chug half a cup of coffee before she wanted to leave.
Brenda's was remarkable, as expected. Brenda is the self-proclaimed "Bag Lady of Lee." She is the queen of, well, stuff. She goes to yardsales and picks through trash at the dump to find things of questionable value and then finds ways to give them value. Today she had a case of what appeared to be 8.5" x 11" paper cut into thirds, the long way. She was trying to find a way to make these 7500 2.8" x 11" sheets useful. She'd tried glueing then ends of stacks of them together with a hot glue gun with acceptable results only to realize that just one pad was enough to take down all the phone numbers and create all the shopping lists you'd want to for years to come. So she was looking for other uses. Mom needed a stand for her new apartment so we went through the basement and the shed looking for furniture. So much stuff! Floor to ceiling of years are yardsale finds. There's one room devoted entirely to McDonald's Happy Meal Toys (just McDonald's, other fast food toys are in a different area). Another room is just for Legos. An area of the shed has so many baskets hanging from the rafters that you can't see the ceiling, and there's another area devoted entirely to prints of every sort. The stuff goes on and on.
Brenda has rules when going to yardsales: You can never pay asking price for anything at a yardsale. You can never leave a yardsale empty-handed. The latter rule has led to some interesting collections. Brenda let me in on the secret to never leaving empty handed. You choose something to collect every yardsale season, and make sure it is something that most people would consider so worthless that they wouldn't even put it in the yardsale. One year she choose plastic flowers. At the end of the summer she made a giant mountain of flowers to engulf her mailbox. She left it like that for a while, then sold all the flowers at her own yardsale the following summer. She's more selective about her fake flowers now. She gets very realistic ones, and matches the flowers to whatever is in season outside, leaving them up only while the real flowers are in bloom outside and changing them to match the changing season. She delights in fooling people into thinking the fake flowers are real. It is important to note that she often has the real things growing right outside the door and could go out and cut the same flowers to have inside, but that wouldn't be as fun. Now Brenda is acquiring fake fruit. She doesn't know exactly what she's going to do with it all yet. That is half the point of getting it, though. When she has enough, inspiration will strike her and the fruit will take its place in the grand scheme of things.
Sadly, this trip, coming so soon after my big move, I wasn't so much in the mood to acquire more stuff. I think in a couple months I'll take a trip down again. I did manage to find a candy dot maker in amongst all the stuff. Seemed like a perfect way to use some of those 7500 strips of paper.
On returning to the Curti house, I found the remaining half cup of coffee sitting on the counter where I'd left it. I took a swig. Yeah, it had been sitting on the counter in 90 degree heat all day, but the acid in coffee will keep cream from spoiling (I think) so as long as it doesn't tast bad or have chunks, you're OK. Unfortunately, there was a chunk, and I had a brief moment of "swallow or spit?" thinking it might be just a breadcrumb. I spat it out into the sink and it tried to crawl away. A black and had found its way into my coffee. I was pretty grossed out by now. My addiction must be somewhat subsided now, because I dumped the rest of the coffee out and didn't make any more.
So THAT is why I only had half a cup of coffee today.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
cup 4: friendly again
Where: The Friendly Toast, Portsmouth, NHWhen: June 28, 8:30 am
Who: Jessica Brakeley
What: house
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